AU: Menace
by rond1101953
Summary: This is the first in a series of changes to Stargate episodes (hence, the AU) where I think the screenwriters (1) didn't whump Daniel enough, (2) forgot they whumped Daniel and shouldn't have, or (3) just didn't focus enough on Daniel. If you're familiar with the series, you should be able to figure out where in the episode I begin to change the plot.


AU: Menace

Reese looked at the Daniel model as it told her it was her friend. In a few nanoseconds of review, she found that this was correct. It had been the other models that had tried to hurt her, but the Daniel model had tried to touch her neck again, and she didn't like that. Her neck should never be touched, Father said. The Daniel model was now assuring her that if she deactivated her toys and herself, it would reactivate her when she was fixed. It was difficult to calculate the accuracy of that statement. So many variables. It was complex. When the situation was complex, she tended to blank out. Maybe Father _had_ made her wrong.

She looked away from the Daniel model as part of the door to her right fell inwards. The O'Neill model rushed in with one of its toys. Was it this planet's version of her playthings? She had seen other models holding similar objects. The O'Neill model pointed one end of the toy at her. Suddenly her vision was obscured by the Daniel model moving in front of her. There was a loud sound, and she felt something impact her. It was powerful and she fell backwards onto the metal ramp.

She looked over at the Daniel model. It was also laying on the metal ramp, its eyes squinting in what her programming identified as pain and desperation. It stared at her. It wanted her to shut her toys off and go to sleep. The Daniel model had told her it would protect her and be her friend. She believed it now. It had tried to defend her against the O'Neill model's toy. It could be trusted. She closed her eyes and turned her thoughts to her toys, transmitting the frequency and message that would loosen the cohesion among the parts, rendering them useless as they passed her wishes and the frequency on to the next ones.

She opened her eyes. The Daniel model's face was whiter. The red blotch on its jacket was growing. She was going to tell it she had done what it asked and was going to sleep, but there was a touch at the back of her neck. No!

Master Sergeant Dave Siler extinguished the blow torch and helped Colonel O'Neill kick in the metal opening. He watched as Colonel O'Neill strode into the gateroom, raised his gun, and shot the robot. But not before Dr. Jackson had leapt in front of it. The single shot brought both Jackson and the robot down. Resolutely ignoring Dr. Jackson, O'Neill quickly moved to the side of the robot and took out what looked like a compact CD. He moved down the ramp and spoke into his radio.

After a moment, he moved back up the embarkation ramp and raised Dr. Jackson's jacket to examine the wound. By the doctor's reaction, that looked extremely painful. After a brief, angry-looking exchange, the colonel put his hand on his earpiece and walked out of the room, leaving Dr. Jackson lying on the ramp next to the inert robot.

"Get a med team in there!" O'Neill barked at him as he marched down the hallway.

Dave stared, incredulous, at the grim scene in front of him before his senses kicked in, and he yelled into the intercom, "Medical team to the gateroom," several times. He rushed into the gateroom and knelt by Dr. Jackson's side. He didn't quite know what to do. He grabbed a cloth from his back pocket and pressed it into the wound. Dr. Jackson groaned again. Dave was never so happy to see the medical staff carrying the gurney over the doorway. Mercifully, the self-destruct countdown and its dreadful noise had ended. The base and the planet were safe. He moved away from Dr. Jackson, stepping over the detritus that used to be the replicators, and headed toward the storage rooms that held the hazmat barrels. He hoped they had enough on base. It was going to be a tedious clean-up.

Colonel Jack O'Neill relayed to Hammond that the threat had been eliminated. He couldn't remember a time that he'd been so angry that didn't involve the Goa'uld. What the f*** had Jackson thought he was doing, jumping into his line of fire like that? Would the idiot never learn? And now Jack had shot him. Shot him! He could have been killed. Worse, he could have been killed and the robot bitch could have been fine and continuing her vendetta against them. They would have had to blow up the mountain. His anger continued to mount. Served Jackson right that he was bleeding in the gateroom. Idiot! He heard Siler's panicked voice calling for the medical staff over the intercom as he stormed through the corridor. Jackson would live to irritate another day no doubt.

"Sir?" an airman asked as he strode past.

Jack just sneered at him and he shrunk back into the cement work. Hammond had summoned Jack and he was duty-bound to obey. Down the second hallway, he realized that as the 2IC of the base, he should probably order something.

He spotted Mendez. "Captain!"

Mendez hopped to his feet with admirable alacrity. "Sir!"

"Mop 2 and start sweeping and vacuuming this shit up. Watch out for any acid."

"Yes, sir!"

Jack found Hammond and Carter in the room that housed the self-destruct computer.

"What's the situation, Colonel? The replicators were interfering with all of our communications, even the radios. We believed we heard the crisis had been averted, but we wanted to be sure," Hammond said.

"Yes, sir. The robot has been taken down and the replicators destroyed. They just disintegrated when she went down." Jack brandished the disk at Carter. "Want a souvenir?"

Carter's eyes practically sparkled. She eagerly took the disk. "Thank you, sir!" Jack knew he wouldn't see her in the near future unless he went to her lab.

"We've started clean-up procedures, sir."

"I'd like you to continue to take charge of that, Colonel."

"Yes, sir." This was going to be one of those days that never ended…

Doctor Janet Fraiser was at her wit's end. The infirmary was teeming with patients who, quite frankly, she didn't know how to treat. The acid-like burns from the replicators were unlike anything she had dealt with before. They had shoved as many men as they could into the showers to flush the acid, but it didn't seem to help very much if at all. The patients were in so much pain…

She heard the call for a med team to go to the gateroom. If it was to tend to that robot princess, she didn't have the time nor the inclination. Her Hippocratic oath was to her human patients. She sent Dr. Patel with a nurse and an orderly and hoped that would be enough.

She spotted Nurse Carlson and waved her over. "Is the water helping at all?"

The nurse shook her head. "But it's not making things worse, either. The water seems to slow the spread, but the patients are still in very bad pain and not out of danger."

"This has really got me stumped," Janet admitted.

"Maybe we should put butter on it like my mom used to do to my burns," Carlson murmured idly.

Janet eyed her nurse suspiciously. "You know that's just a folk cure that is totally contraindicated today."

Carlson sighed. "I know, but for some reason, my burn always felt better after she put butter on it. Or cooking oil if we didn't have butter."

Janet pressed her lips together and just thought for a few minutes, reviewing everything. What could she lose? They had tried all the conventional methods for treating acid burns. It didn't help that the Chemistry lab "hadn't seen anything like it" and that they were even leery of labeling it an acid, although it certainly mimicked one. "Okay, let's try it."

"Really?"

"The usual just isn't cutting it at all. It's time for the unusual. C'mon, let's raid the kitchen."

Patel came rushing in with the gurney.

"Kunar?" Janet asked.

"Gunshot wound to the upper right chest."

"Can you handle it?" Janet asked.

"If there's an O.R. open."

"Two should be free. Warner's in one."

He nodded.

She turned back to Nurse Carlson. "Let's go, Michelle. We need to rule out some more solutions."

It turned out that vegetable oil did the trick. It bonded with whatever the acid-like substance was and turned it into a tar-like goo. Then they just debrided the goo. The pain levels had fallen to manageable numbers, and all the people who had been sprayed with the replicator "acid" were resting comfortably with medication.

Dr. Fraiser sighed. It had been a long and demanding day. Now that the medical crisis was over, she was exhausted. After reporting to General Hammond, she was making one last round of the infirmary before she was going to find an empty bunk somewhere and sleep for a week.

She pulled back the curtain of the farthest bed and almost tripped over Teal'c sitting on the floor. Engaged in kel'no'reem, she thought. She tried to tiptoe around him, but he had already opened his eyes.

"Sorry to disturb you," she whispered. "Why…?" She didn't need to ask him why he was here. Dr. Daniel Jackson had been the emergency in the gateroom, as she had found out later. Gunshot wound and wrist broken in two places. His left arm was now encased in a cast that extended from his palm to just below his elbow. It was propped up on a pillow. The right shoulder wound had been a through and through. The holes had been lavaged, examined thoroughly, and sewn shut with two liters of blood replenishing Daniel's body. He was pale and slightly feverish but would recover. The crease in his brow indicated he was not resting comfortably. She eyed his pain medication chart and increased the meds slightly. It didn't help that he was lying on his exit wound, but with his left wrist broken, they couldn't roll him over on that side. She had also wanted to check his scalp wound she had treated earlier when the robot had thrown him bodily into a bookcase, but he was laying on it, too, and she didn't want to disturb him.

She gave Teal'c a reproving stare. "You should be in bed resting."

"As should you, DoctorFraiser."

"I'm going to bed right now, and so should you."

"I will rest sufficiently here."

Teal'c was not going to budge and she didn't have the energy to fight him over this. "Well, don't get in the way of my nurses."

He acknowledged her order with a tilt of his head.

She pulled the curtain back around the bed and left wondering why Colonel O'Neill wasn't sitting with Daniel as per usual. Maybe the mean, unprofessional exchange the Colonel had with Daniel when she was cleaning his scalp wound wasn't the anomaly she had hoped it had been. Poor Daniel.

Major Samantha Carter emptied another dustpan of replicator pieces into the hazmat bin. She was so tired and would rather have been holed up in her lab examining Reese's operating system or running more tests on the replicator parts. The Colonel had scotched that plan from the very beginning. Not one iota of the replicators was going to be kept anywhere on the planet. Every inch of the SGC was going to be swept, vacuumed, and mopped twice. Then they'd set the hazmat barrels in front of the Stargate and let the formation of the wormhole do its thing. This section was just finishing up the first sweeping. She wondered if she could fall asleep standing up without being chained to a wall in a Goa'uld cell.

Colonel O'Neill careened around the corner. He still had that furious countenance he had in the self-destruct room. She had only seen that look on his face a couple of times in the five years she had known him, but she had learned to give him wide berth when he was in such a mood. Daniel had called it Jack's "ops" face. It was downright scary, she had to admit.

"Sit rep, Major?"

Oh, yeah, he was all business today. "We 've nearly completed the first sweeping of this sector, sir."

He nodded. "Finish doing that and then have everyone helping you here stand down for the night. No one leaves the base. The night shift is coming on and they can finish the job for now. All clothing goes in a hazmat bin."

"Yes, sir."

"I mean it, Carter. No sneaking back into your lab to burn the midnight oil. I want you rested for tomorrow."

Dear God, was he going to ask for a third cleaning? "Yes, sir. I just wanted to stop by the infirmary first."

"You injured?"

"No, sir. I just wanted to check on Daniel, sir."

His face got impossibly harder. "Major…"

"I thought I saw Reese break his arm before the cameras went out. I wanted to check it out, sir."

She could actually see him rein in his anger before he replied, "Yeah, okay, whatever…then sleep. That's an order, Major." Then he turned on his heels and marched back the way he came.

"Yes, sir," she said to his back.

The curtain was drawn around the farthest infirmary bed. Daniel's bed, as they called it all too often. He liked to be tucked in the back away from prying eyes, and Janet's staff indulged him. She pulled back the drape…and almost tripped over Teal'c.

"Sorry," she whispered.

He simply inclined his head.

"Is Daniel okay?" She looked at the cast on the pillow and then gasped. She hadn't expected to see a bandage across Daniel's chest and shoulder. "What the hell happened?" she demanded of Teal'c as quietly as she could muster amid her shock.

"O'Neill shot DanielJackson."

She stared at him incredulously. That explained the Colonel's mood.

"It was not intentional. DanielJackson threw himself in O'Neill's line of fire."

Oh, boy. This was bad, very bad. "Why would he do that?"

"I do not know. DanielJackson has not awakened since placed here, so I was unable to inquire further." He indicated the plastic chair by the other side of Daniel's bed. "Would you like to wait with me until he awakens?"

She shook her head. "The Colonel has ordered me to get some sleep."

"A wise decision. DanielJackson will still be here when you arrive in the morning."

"Is he going to be okay?"

"DoctorFraiser believes so."

"Well, that's good enough for me. Goodnight, Teal'c."

He simply nodded and closed his eyes again.

She repositioned the curtain and continued her way to the bunkroom. So, Colonel O'Neill shot Daniel in the chest. No wonder he was on the warpath all afternoon and evening. She sighed. The next few days were going to be rough.

Dr. Kunar Patel repositioned Dr. Jackson's casted arm on the bed under the watchful and seemingly disapproving eye of the Jaffa. You'd have thought Kunar had shot the archaeologist. Even though the Jaffa was _their_ Jaffa, the alien still had the ability to scare him down to his shorts.

"The arm no longer needs to be elevated," he said aloud.

There was no reason to explain his medical decisions to Master Teal'c. Kunar knew his way around the infirmary, but he felt he needed to say something into the oppressive silence. Yesterday's encounter with the man continued to unsettle him. The Jaffa had burst into the radiology lab demanding to know Dr. Jackson's condition and wouldn't leave until he had an answer, despite the medical staff trying to shoo him out. He had said it was to inform Colonel O'Neill. He had stayed, immovable, quizzing Kunar about the gunshot wound until the x-ray came out confirming the exact locations of the wrist breaks. He had exchanged some words with a woozy Dr. Jackson and had left the room abruptly.

Now he was glaring at Kunar like the doctor's mentor at Johns Hopkins. Nothing that Kunar did ever seemed to satisfy that man. If he had survived Dr. Collingsworth, he could survive a glowering Jaffa.

He turned to face Master Teal'c. "His vitals look good, except for a slightly raised temperature, which is not unusual after a trauma like this. If it persists, we'll have to watch out for infection, but I'd say everything points to a complete recovery. He'll have to have some PT for the shoulder, of course."

Master Teal'c bowed slightly in acknowledgement. "Thank you for your expertise on DanielJackson's behalf, Dr. Patel." With that pronouncement, he strode out of the infirmary, leaving an astonished but pleased Kunar in his wake.

Jack was just tucking into his breakfast when he saw Teal'c enter the commissary and motioned him over. "Well?"

"Dr. Patel seems satisfied with DanielJackson's condition."

Jack nodded. "Stupid son of a bitch," he mumbled under his breath.

Teal'c frowned and Jack felt his face flush. Of course, Teal'c would hear that. He cleared his throat. "That's what Jackson called me: a stupid son of a bitch."

"That does not sound like something DanielJackson would say."

"Yeah, well, I'd just shot him."

Teal'c continued to frown but moved to the line to get some food. Jack had half a mind to get up and leave before he came back, but he stayed put. Teal'c was crazy protective of Jackson. Some kind of Jaffa atonement thing. Jack would come up on the wrong side of any dispute he and Daniel had. This would be no different. He might as well wait and get it over with.

Teal'c returned with his plate overflowing with eggs, bacon, hash browns, pancakes, and some bagels and cream cheese. All the Jaffa comfort foods, which meant he was upset. He set the tray down with an audible thud.

"Do you continue to maintain that DanielJackson called you a son of a bitch?"

"A _stupid_ son of a bitch. Yes, I do. I might have witnesses." Maybe Siler had heard their exchange. Jack didn't mention he'd called Jackson a stupid son of a bitch first.

Teal'c wisely let the matter drop. "Did GeneralHammond contact the Asgard as DanielJackson suggested?"

"Yeah, he did. He already got a reply. They'll be by shortly to pick up the robot. Seems like when it's in their best interest, they're just a hop and a skip away, but when we really need them, they're nowhere to be found."

"All species value self-preservation first, O'Neill."

Teal'c began to eagerly attack his mountain of food, and they didn't speak again before Jack finished and left the room. Time to confront the stupid son of a bitch.

Carter was leaning over Jackson's bed when he pulled back the curtain. She looked up rather surprised when she saw him. Jackson lay squinting muzzily at them both. He was awake but didn't look quite with it.

"Sir," Carter said, straightening.

"Stand down, Major."

She didn't salute, but she didn't relax, either. Jackson looked like he thought they were speaking some alien language he didn't know and was trying hard to translate. This was one conversation where Jack didn't want any witnesses.

"Why aren't you in your lab studying the robot's disk? You only have a bit of time before the Asgard come and take it away from you."

"ETA, sir?"

Jack shook his head. "No idea, but they sounded like they'd arrive _tout suite_."

She raised her eyebrows at Jackson.

"Go. I'm not going anywhere soon," he murmured.

She left surprisingly reluctantly, and Jack pulled the curtain back around Jackson's bed.

"_Tout de suite_," Jackson said.

Jack looked at him incredulously. Jackson had to know that Jack was here to ream him a new one, and he was correcting his French? Stupid son of a bitch…

Jack ran a hand through his hair. Seeing Jackson lying there in obvious pain made him reconsider launching directly into his tirade.

"How's the…" His arm made a sweeping motion meant to include both the wrist and the wound.

"Hurts," Jackson said in a rare moment of honesty where his health was concerned. Jack saw his right hand snake up to the pain medication button and push it several times. Sometimes Jackson didn't play fair at all. Time to launch.

"Goddammit, Daniel! How many times have I told you not to get into my line of fire? Anyone's line of fire?"

Jackson looked like he was actually trying to figure out the number of times and coming up empty.

"You f**king well better not do it again, or you're off the team. I mean it. Off the team. I got enough to worry about without wondering if you're gonna jump out of nowhere in front of me."

"Okay."

"Okay, what?"

"Okay, I'm off the team if I do it again."

"That's not good enough, Jackson," and Jack saw him wince at Jack's use of his surname. "I want you to promise me you'll never do it again."

Jackson just stared at him, confusion all over his face.

Jack let more than a few seconds tick by. "Well?"

"I can't promise you that, Jack." His eyelids began to flutter, the medicine taking effect.

"Goddammit, Daniel!" He wanted to slap that confused look from Jackson's face. He wanted to grab him and shake some sense into that supposedly genius brain of his. Instead, he grabbed the curtain, ripped it open, and stomped from the infirmary.

"I'm sure he didn't mean it," Sam said, gently linking her fingers with Daniel's uncasted right hand.

"Yes, he did," he answered grumpily.

"He's just really upset that he shot you. Give him some time to calm down."

There it was, the defense of Jack that seemed to be Sam's default mode of late. Well, not so lately. For a couple of years, come to think of it. "More like he was upset that he didn't kill me," Daniel muttered and Sam laughed.

"So? Promise him you'll never do that again and it'll all blow over."

"How can I promise something I don't know I can keep? It's not like I think about it before I jump; I just jump."

Sam laughed again. "You can jump in front of me whenever there's a staff weapon pointed at me."

"Ha. See? I can't do that if I make that promise, and of course I'd jump in front of you if that happened. That hasn't happened yet? The planet with the lavender sky?"

"You stepped in front of me and a knife, as I recall."

"So that doesn't count?"

"Not technically as a line of _fire_, Daniel."

"Well, that's splitting hairs, I think."

"And you call yourself a linguist? You take advanced courses in splitting hairs."

Daniel chuckled with her. It was nice chatting with Sam like he used to. It was rare nowadays. He missed it more than he realized. Once the SGC had garnered more scientists there, everything had become more compartmentalized. They seemed to collaborate only when she needed a translation. The old days were better.

She gently squeezed his hand. "Seriously, it's no big deal. Just promise the colonel. It's what you intend to do, even if in the long run, you don't. It's no biggie." She gave him a sisterly peck on the cheek and then left for her lab. Daniel watched her leave and tried not to sink down into the funk he seemed to be wallowing in the past few days.

Jack had not visited him since he had demanded the promise that Daniel had decided he wouldn't give. You should only make promises you could keep, right? Sam said it was no big deal. Tell Jack what he wants to hear. Daniel sighed. She was probably right, and he was making a mountain out of a molehill. What was the big deal?

He knew the answer to that question. The big deal was that it was another small chip chiseled away from the character that used to constitute Doctor Daniel Jackson, peaceful explorer. The man he had been told that Jack had called the conscience of the SGC. That man valued honesty, integrity, non-violence, and compassion. Where was that man now? Not lying in this bed in the infirmary.

Small chips added up, and all the chips, big and small, he had to rationalize away, justify, and stick deep inside his soul where he prayed they'd never resurface. He'd learned to strip, clean, and reassemble a Baretta and to shoot it accurately enough to satisfy Jack. He'd told himself it was the price to pay to be on SG-1 and be able to search the galaxy for Sha're. He'd told himself that carrying a gun didn't mean you had to fire the gun. But when people are shooting at you and your team, you shoot back. He'd mourned for those first living beings he had shot. Now he had killed so many, he couldn't keep track of which planet his victims were on much less their faces.

And the goa'uld larvae. The look on Sam's face had been priceless. Sweet little Danny Jackson raking the container and killing all those infant goa'uld. He'd justified that to himself easily enough. Jack had given him an approving nod at the briefing. But what Sam had seen and no one else had was the look of pure satisfaction on his face when he strafed the container. Oh, yeah. It had felt good. All his anger, grief, and frustration over losing Sha're poured into those bullets. Afterwards, that had been the scariest thing to learn about himself—that he could enjoy killing. And that had been the start of a quick plummet to machine gunning lots of bad guys. Just blowing them away. He had even put his gun to the temple of the torturer who was just about to rape Sam, blew him away executioner style, and had felt deeply satisfied. He'd received a lot of praise from everyone at the SGC over that one. Yes, guns and Daniel Jackson: that was a big chip carved away from his soul. That he could feel no remorse in killing another person—that was piece of knowledge he wished he'd never learned.

Five years of learning how to shoot guns, kill a person with a knife or his bare hands, learning how to lie to less technically advanced indigenous cultures, and devising schemes to trick them. There were a lot of chips. What was making a promise he knew he couldn't keep compared to all that mess? One more false promise among many. Was this really the time to draw the line in the sand?

Daniel sighed. He knew it wasn't just his worry over his integrity that had him depressed and sunk in this pity party. It was also the dynamics of the team. For a few years there, definitely after the first year when they were forced to meld together into a team, he had felt they had moved from being teammates into being family. He had been desperate for that. Abydos had been so amazing, with a gorgeous and loving wife, a welcoming family with Kasuf and Skaara, and a population in Nagada who looked upon him as a savior and sage. Heady times. It had all been stolen from him in a second. He needed something to grab onto to keep from diving into madness. Jack had been there for him, and shortly after, Sam and Teal'c, too. They had become his lifelines. Now those lines seemed to be unraveling. Jack and Sam seemed to be doing some strange infatuation dance, which was painful to watch. Teal'c seemed to be disaffected by it, too, and talked more and more about leaving SG-1 and going to help Bra'tac and the Jaffa rebellion. And where did that leave Daniel? On his own again, as he was at eight years old in New York, as he was through all those foster homes, as he was seven years ago after his disastrous seminar on the pyramids, as he was five years ago after Apophis stole Sha're, as he was…now?

But wasn't he the bounce-back kid? Kick him down and he comes right back? How many times did the cosmos need him to do that? When could he just curl up in a ball and say, "no mas"? It felt like the time was close at hand. He had always resisted medication, wanting to be as clear-headed as he could be, especially after Machello's little invention getting inside him. This time he was pumping morphine as if he couldn't get enough into him. All he wanted to do was drift aimlessly on drugs through the days and nights not thinking or feeling. Janet had even noticed and remarked on it. He wasn't demanding to get out of the infirmary at the earliest possible minute. Jack would usually let him recuperate at his place. Daniel knew that offer wasn't coming this time. And that hurt more than his head or wrist or shoulder.

The loss of Jack's friendship was the deepest and cruelest chip of all to his soul. It was his fault, really. He had learned early and often not to open up to people. It was a lesson learned repeatedly from neglectful or abusive foster families, bullying schoolmates, and jealous graduate school and archaeological colleagues. But Abydos had changed him. The Abydonian people had been so warm and welcoming, sharing food and stories. After Ra's death, they had embraced music, dance, and laughter in large and overt quantities instead of small and covert amounts. He had been swept up in their newfound freedom and delight. And their love. He had opened himself up to them and had not been punished for it. When that had been taken from him, he attached himself to Jack.

Jack certainly was not as warm and open as the Adydonians. Just the opposite. As a former Black Ops soldier, he was secretive and suspicious. Hell, that first trip through the gate, he was suicidal! But he had changed when he'd come back to fetch him. He seemed more content. He let his droll sense of humor creep out. Didn't it just feed Daniel's ego when the man whom many hardened military men feared with good reason tolerated Dr. Jackson? Let Dr. Jackson argue with him? Let Dr. Jackson joke with him? Well, they hadn't gone through the stargate on that first mission with Colonel Jack O'Neill. They hadn't defeated Ra with him. They hadn't…jumped into the line of fire for him.

Daniel groaned at the irony. Wasn't that the karma of the universe—to come full circle with him on the outside this time? His friendship with Jack had started with him jumping into a line of fire and now was seeming to end with him jumping into a line of fire. He had started with trying to prove his worth to Jack and was ending with him feeling he had to prove his worth to Jack. The past year had some particularly painful moments for Daniel. Jack took on negotiations with the Asgard when they were on K'tau, when that had always been Daniel's position as spokesman for the team. Jack had sent Teal'c with the Russian team in the ziggurat, even though he knew Daniel spoke fluent Russian. And worst of all, his teammates had sent him merrily on his way to go undercover with the major players of the Goa'uld without a second thought, without any words of concern or advice besides Teal'c's warning of physical and sexual abuse of lotars by their system lords. That had actually been useful information although alarming. Jack barely listened to him when he spoke anymore, preferring Sam's newly minted obsequiousness.

Why had he jumped into Jack's line of fire? He thought he was getting through to Reese. It seemed as if she were about to agree to shut down the replicators and turn herself off right before Jack stormed into the situation and shot her before Daniel even had a chance to explain what was going on. They could have handed the Asgard an undamaged Reese to analyze. Who knew what havoc Jack's bullet had unleashed in her body? What if it had impaired something crucial to their understanding of how to stop the replicators? Jack. Shoot now and don't ask any questions. Ever. Stupid son of a bitch.

Daniel sighed. Okay. Enough of his wallowing. He would promise Jack, however weird a promise that would be. He would accept another chip off his soul and grab hold of one last shred of hope of salvaging their friendship.

But maybe it was time to consider seriously about moving on….

~_fin~_


End file.
